Desolate

Human beings, who are almost unique in having the ability to learn from the experience of others, are also remarkable for their apparent disinclination to do so.
-- Douglas Adams, from Last Chance To See

To illustrate the vain conceit that the universe must be somehow pre-ordained for us, because we are so well-suited to live in it, he [Adams] mimed a wonderfully funny imitation of a puddle of water, fitting itself snugly into a depression in the ground, the depression uncannily being exactly the same shape as the puddle."
-- Richard Dawkins, in "Lament for Douglas" (14 May 2001)

To surrender to ignorance and call it God has always been premature, and it remains premature today.
--Isaac Asimov, "On Religiosity," Free Inquiry

Imagine the people who believe such things and who are not ashamed to ignore, totally, all the patient findings of thinking minds through all the centuries since the Bible was written. And it is these ignorant people, the most uneducated, the most unimaginative, the most unthinking among us, who would make themselves the guides and leaders of us all; who would force their feeble and childish beliefs on us; who would invade our schools and libraries and homes. I personally resent it bitterly.
-- Isaac Asimov, Canadian Atheists Newsletter, 1994

People everywhere enjoy believing things that they know are not true. It spares them the ordeal of thinking for themselves and taking responsibility for what they know.
-- Brooks Atkinson, Once Around The Sun (1951)

Nothing doth more hurt in a state than that cunning men pass for wise.
-- Francis Bacon (attributed: source unknown)

For that rogue Rove:
Goodbye and may the law of truth and exposure follow you the rest of your days and beyond. You are a man of little dick and brain, of innate cruelty and injustice.
This quote is for you!!!
Nothing doth more hurt in a state than that cunning men pass for wise.
-- Francis Bacon (attributed: source unknown)
And this:
Truth is the daughter of time, not of authority.
-- Francis Bacon (attributed: source unknown)

All religions, with their gods, their demi-gods, and their prophets, their messiahs and their saints, were created by the prejudiced fancy of men who had not attained the full development and full possession of their faculties.
-- Mikhail Bakunin, God and the State (1871), quoted from Emma Goldman, "The Philosophy of Atheism" (1916)

Religion is a collective insanity.
-- Mikhail Bakunin, from Rufus K Noyes, Views of Religion, quoted from James A Haught, ed., 2000 Years of Disbelief

Theology is the science of the divine lie
-- Mikhail Bakunin, from George Seldes, ed., The Great Quotations, quoted from James A Haught, ed., 2000 Years of Disbelief